Tag Archive: m.c. escher

The Netherlands is one the world’s hub of great modern design, brilliant innovation and experimentation in architecture, industrial design, urban planning and graphic design. So in thinking out of the U.S. box, we are highlighting some graphic designers and illustrators from the land that some call Holland.

M.C. Escher Self Portrait 1929

M.C. Escher

Probably the best known dutch graphic artist is M.C. Escher. Escher’s work is mostly based on mathematics and explores architecture, illusion, infinity and impossible realities.

Escher wrote his first paper in 1941 titled ‘Regular Division of the Plane with Asymmetric Congruent Polygons’, which detailed his mathematical approach to creation of artwork which gained him recognition as a research mathematician.

It is impossible to know anything about art and never have come across any of his works.

Waterfall

House of Stairs

Relativity

Gravitation

Aart van Dobbenburgh

Aart van Dobbenburgh was born in Amsterdam, was known for his lithographs, themed with landscapes and flowers. He illustrated the books of Russian writers Feodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy, among many others. More than 35 lithographs were placed in the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow and in 1965 he received the Leo Tolstoy medal. With quite a different approach than Escher, van Dobbenburgh’s work leans towards realism and is much softer.

Now we move on to more ‘modern’ Dutch designers.

Ella Nitters

Ella Nitters currently lives and works as a freelance illustrator and artist in Rotterdam and graduated from Willem de Kooning Academy of Arts. Her work mixes realism, fine art and a fantastic use of lines. Love the cherub with umbrellas as the arrows.

Esta Aart

Esta Aart is an illustrator, designer and typographer based in the Netherlands. Her works below fall more into the graphic design category. The last piece is the epitome of dutch design.